Just What The Doctor Ordered

This is why they brought in Doc. On an afternoon when the bats didn’t keep the pace they had set for the first five games of the season, Roy Halladay put the Phillies on his back.

Halladay threw his first complete game with the Phils, the 50th of his career and 150th win of his career, en route to a 2-1 Phillies victory over the Houston Astros.

The game started off right for the bats, as Jimmy Rollins hit a leadoff home run, putting the Phils up 1-0 early. However other than a manufactured run that started with a Raul Ibanez double, and ended with an RBI groundout for Carlos Ruiz that was all the offense the Phillies put together against Roy Oswalt, another one of the best pitchers in the National League, as the Phils mustered only six hits on the day. Thankfully, with Doc on the mound, that was all they needed.

Halladay got himself in a little bit of trouble in the 6th inning, loading the bases with no outs. However, a double play ball and a Carlos Lee popup later, only one run came across, making the game 2-1. Back-to-back hits started the 7th inning for the Astros; however Halladay then proceeded to retire the next nine batters he faced, giving the Phillies the 2-1 win.

The line for Halladay was terrific, 9 IP 7H 1R 0ER 8K and 22 first-pitch strikes to only 33 batters for Houston. He even added his second hit of the season, to lift his batting average to .286. Through two games, Doc is 2-0 with an ERA of 0.56 and a WHIP of 0.94, throw in 17 Ks to go along with only 2BB.

After a 5-1 road trip, the Phillies head back to Citizens Bank Park for the home opener tomorrow, and the start of a six-game homestand. With the Nationals heading into town, it is safe to say anything less than 7-2 to start the season at this point would be a letdown. After the three-game set with the Nats, the Marlins come to town, for what should be the first real test of the 2010 season.

If Halladay continues with performances like these first two, he should be addressed as the Surgeon not the Doctor. I can’t wait for his next outing.

The Ashburn Award for an outstanding pitching effort? Come on PN, please inject some creativity into this worn out award. The Phillies history is rich with great (and dreadful) players from all postions who specialized in all aspects of the game. Something like the Jim Bunning or Steve Carlton award would have been more appropriate for Halladay’s results today. I am not saying that Ashburn does not deserve to be recognized, but to do so for every award worthy Phillie performance is stale and lazy. Especially when there are so many other historically significant Philles to cannonize. History is part of the allure of baseball.

Roy Halladay is undoubtedly the best pitcher in the game today, and this afternoons game was a perfect example as to why. Had it been any other pitcher on the mound today, I have little to no doubt that we would have ended up with a big fat L.

I mean seriously here, I just want everyone to consider this for a moment: do you really think we would have won today with any other pitcher?

I think Roy could very easily end up with a 20+ win season this year, and he’s off to a good start with his first 2 wins!

About a month ago, I was watching Baseball Tonight. And they asked for predictions of how many games Halladay would win, Kruk said 23. I thought he was off his rocker, and then Bobby V said 25. After seeing Halladay pitch, I can believe it now. I am not old enough to compare Halladay to a Phillies pitcher. He is a lot better than Schilling.

I just hope that Hamels saw what Halladay did today. He faced adversity, and instead of throwing a pity party, he stepped up his game.

I mean Halladay is overpowering AND has three other ++ pitches you have to look for. AND he goes all the way and completes games. I can’t think of another guy in the National League that did that. Maybe Pedro back in the day. They are physically different but Pedro and the fastball, the curve, AND the change. Check that. Probably Greg Maddux. Man, he is unreal. He’s the Grim Reaper. I am developing a mancrush.

Hamels is not on the same level as Halladay in terms of both pitching ability and character. It will take more than watching Halladay show how it’s done for Hamels to transcend .500 pitcher mediocrity and learn how to battle with every pitch without succumbing to self centered juvenile temper tantrums. Maybe if a group of Phillies decide to tune his millionare ass up a little either verbally or physically after the next time he glares at a fielder for making an error or cringes at himself after being tatooed by a hitter while he is on the mound, he may wake up and be angered enough to perform up to his potential ability.

Man crush. Too funny, Dipsy. Why? Because I texted buddies of mine in the bottom of the 9th when Roy was mowing them down with his unbelievable movement with that same comment. How were the Phils so lucky to get this guy??

Hamels will be fine, I am not sure your idea will work James, may be worth a try, everyone responds to different instruction. Some need a kick in the ass, others need coddling, others are in the middle.

Remember Hamels had that 15 win season he will be fine, especially if we consistently hit. My only fear with the hitting is our reserves, there is a gigantic drop off and we need to keep them fresh.

Remember how many had issues when Bowa was manager cause he was a hard ass and only a hard ass. That was why they canned him. We lost Rolens cause of him.

why do you have to take a day that Doc pitched a GREAT game to bash Hamels. Hamels battled his way through his first start, did not explode when he got a bad call or react when Ryan made the error, or was it PP. He did not crumble after giving up the dinger, like he seemed to do last year. So at least if you are going to be an idiot and ruin the Roy love going on in here, which I agree 100 percent with. At least don’t talk about last year. I still like the SI cover of Roy headline
This may hurt
It is probally good that the phillies did not get any hits in the last three innings so Charlie did not have to pinch hit for Doc. You have to love the complete game. I already have a mancrush on doc

Thank you Shag beta sigma delta (weird name though), I was thinking the same thing. Looking at Hamels’ stuff in his first start, there is no reason to be worried about him, and it’s telling that one has to fall back on a stat like pitcher wins to bash him, for no reason, when one could just be recognizing what a legendary talent Roy Halladay is.

As great as Roy is, he can only pitch once every 5 games…and that’s where the rest of our starters come in. Both Hamels and Happ showed enough positives in their starts for them to build off of, and even Kendrick looked amazing for a while in his start, shutting down like 9 hitters in a row, despite doing badly in the beginning and ending of the start. Moyer was pretty much great except for that HUGE 5 run inning, and I have to hope he’ll have better luck in his next start.

He always seems to kill the Marlins, and that’s when his next start is I think.

Halladay was in mid-season form….but are any of you really surprised by that? Some of his pitches were downright filthy. Barring some sort of injury, 20+ wins is almost expected. 30… as Dipsy suggests? Wow….THAT would be something else!

Now…as for these other guys….Moyer, Kendrick, Hamels. It’s WAAAYY to early to be all that worried about them. Hamels battled in his first game. It wasn’t what any of us had hoped for but it could have been much worse. All in all, I’ll take it. I would imagine that he’s hungry to to top that.

Kendrick. He had flashes of brilliance in his game….and has shown that he can pitch here. Let’s give him a few starts before rushing to judgement.

Moyer. Moyer is crafty and experienced enough to figure out how to pitch better. Again, way to early to sound the alarms.

Happ looked great. Pitch count was high early in the game….but again, the season just started. You can’t expect most of these guys to be all the way stretched out for awhile yet.

I was at the game in Houston on Saturday. It was fascinating to watch the game with Astros fans and hear what they think of the Phils. They basically view the Phils as an all-star team. In the third inning, when the Astros walked Utley to load the bases for Ryan Howard, there was groan in the stadium.

In the 7th, when Howard came up with a runner on and the Phils down by a run, the Astros fan next to me said they should intentionally walk him, even though that would put the tying run on second base.

And sure enough, they didn’t walk him and Howard blasts a 430-foot home run to give them the lead. At which point, the few Phils fans went crazy. “Should have walked him,” my astros friend says.

After Victorino homered in the 9th to put it away, the guy took off his rally hat and says, “Looks like your friggin all-star team did it again.”

I don’t think Moyer looked particularly good. He was lucky he didn’t give up more runs. And Houston might have the worst offense in baseball. But they won anyway.

This is the best Phillies team I’ve seen and that includes the 2008 champs. I think we’re going to enjoy this season.

not sure if this was mentioned, but doc had 0 earned runs yesterday. he was charged an error on the throw to polly and so the run that scored was unearned (hence the 0.56 ERA, 1 run in 16 innings of work). just wanted to mention that.

was great seeing him pitch. he really didn’t completely settle in until the end of the game (his 8th and 9th were great). will be scary when he is “on” for an entire 9 innings.

Listening to the out of town broadcast on DirecTV has given me new perspective on our ballclub… the vantage point from the outside looking in is that this team is simply unbeatable. The white flags are already waving… the Nats broadcasters sounded like they would have rather been on the field collecting autographs from our guys (than talking about their own) and the ‘Stros guys were downright glum.

Halladay is some kind of pitcher, eh? He’s a cut above the rest, for sure. I said this last year when we are in the midst of Halladay-mania; he’s a once in a generation pitcher… his attitude, his work ethic and the results set him apart. He’s a guy that wants the ball in his hands in the first inning and the ninth and will work his butt off to make sure that happens.

I have a good feeling that Cole definitely improves on last week’s outing….which wasn’t all that bad. Not sure if a “gem” is likely…..but I’d like to see at least 6 or 7 strong innings with something like 7 Ks.

Here’s what I don’t like… home opener, raising the pennant, the balls will be delivered to the field via Army rangers parachuting onto the field, cast of Lion King singing the national anthem, players entering the field on 10th street… you see where I’m going with this. We didn’t play well in the midst of distractions last year… hopefully, we handle them better this year but you can’t ignore the fact that there will be plenty of distractions this week.

That’s true…..BUT…..don’t you think that the whole flag-raising thing is a bit anti-climatic after raising the WS flag last year? Sort of like the ring ceremony….I hate to say “So what” ….but really, it’s just not the same as getting the WS rings.

I don’t think it will be a problem but I didn’t think it would be a problem last year, either.

I’m really not worried… but I thought that I would mention it.

This team has my trust but we ran into an actual bona fide major league pitcher yesterday in Roy Oswalt and didn’t do much with the bats (thankfully, our Roy was a hair better). We’ve got Jason Marquis today, who isn’t terrible… hopefully, with this being the second time we’re seeing him in 7 days, we’ll put a few runs up there to support Hamels.